Looking back on Aug. 8, from the archives of The Dalles Chronicle.
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About a year ago, Brian Goodwin’s doctor told him he’d have to consider not working.
“At the time I laughed,” said Goodwin, but in mid-May, he did finally leave his job as principal of Wahtonka Charter School.
Brian Goodwin, principal/teacher of Wahtonka Community School, agrees with naysayers that the school is a dangerous place to be — but hear him out. It’s only dangerous, he said, to apathy and to kids graduating without real skills.
A resubmitted application to turn Wahtonka Community School into a charter school was declined a second time last Wednesday, but the changes needed were so minor they were done the next day.
A new after-school program on Wednesdays — an early release day in the school district — at Wahtonka Community School is the brainchild of two sisters who are students there. Sisters Anyssa and Nevaeh Campos spent five years in foster care, three of them apart, in homes all over the state and even in Colorado. They don’t know if any of the kids in their program are also foster kids, but at any rate, they just wanted to create a place where kids could come and have some snacks, read some books and play some games.
“Celebrating American Samoa,” a fundraiser set for this Saturday, Nov. 5, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Fort Dalles Readiness Center, is a cultural showcase put on by local students hoping to visit Samoa next spring.
Wahtonka Community School student Damon Spangle was given an award by a local gaming business recently. And it wasn’t because he’s some huge gamer, it was for how he conducts himself as a person. Oregon Trail Games, which is hosting Wagon Con, a first-ever gaming convention in The Dalles in April, wanted to “highlight a kid in our community who is living the Wagon Con ideals of sportsmanship and positive attitude,” said Aaron Bowman, a convention organizer.
Upon walking through the doors of Wahtonka Community School's main room and community space, something feels different.
First classes at Wahtonka are free, begin on Thursday
